The traditional urban blight that led to the misguided urban removal programs of the 50s and 60s took years of good hard use to achieve in once-proud buildings. But now we have Instant Blight: Chain drug stores that were designed hideously ugly from the get-go.

 

Post your favorite pictures of abominable pharmacies.

 

Here are a few of mine. Marietta is a great, quaint town with nice streetscapes, interesting shops and restaurants and even a bit of a skyline. But it has the ugliest cluster of drugstores I've ever seen.

 

Bad signs, in the shadow of the Marietta skyline

 

Closeup of the signs

 

I call this one "Wall Mart"

 

The design says: "Don't walk." These are raised high above the sidewalk, and far below any sense of aesthetics, because they are in a flood plain (The Ohio River is right behind).

 

This might take the prize for ugliness if it weren't right across the street from Walgreens

 

A two-fer

 

CVS looks pretty forlorn here

 

I've showed you mine. Now you show me yours.

 

They used the cheapest possible elements and they all look like hell.  Cinderblocks?  Brick veneer?  The steps at the Rite Aid look like a law suit waiting to happen.  At least the greenery hides some of the Rite Aid.

It is astonishing how little architectural variation drug store chains are willing to offer up to their surroundings; it's not like the contents of the building would so rigidly dictate the exterior. Thanks for identifying another nasty inevitability of suburbia, underwritten in part by our fine friends in pharma.

I'll have to photograph the Walgreen's in Norwood. It's a two-story variation of the one pictured above, but actually looks quite fitting. It is built to the street along Montgomery, but has a very small surface lot on the side street -- a draw back, but it could have been worse. The building actually looks quite nice in comparison to the suburban crap around it.

Adctually, a lot of the problem is cities. They're afraid to demand better of the drug store chains for fear that they'll take their toothpaste and minimum-wage jobs elsewhere. Small-town mayors see Rite-Aid as "economic development." They don't know that these companies do market research, and that the stores need the towns more than the towns need the stores in many cases. And when you hold the chains to a higher standard, they'll at least meet the lowest point of that higher standard. That's probably what happened in Norwood.

^Hence the Walgreens/CVS/Rite Aid intersections all across America.

 

Come to think of it, there are actually a couple of decent chain druggies in Columbus. Uptown Westerville and the the new Tremont development in UA come to mind. Still, it's shocking how many off-the-rack builds there are out there.

I'll have to photograph the Walgreen's in Norwood. It's a two-story variation of the one pictured above, but actually looks quite fitting. It is built to the street along Montgomery, but has a very small surface lot on the side street -- a draw back, but it could have been worse. The building actually looks quite nice in comparison to the suburban crap around it.

 

Here is an old image I have:

 

^Is that second story pure facade or is there something up there?

That one in Ink's picture ain't bad at all.  There are a couple in Lakewood that were forced to look decent and they do.  All it takes is a little push.  Without that push, you get travesties like Euclid and 79th in Clevleand.  Everyone involved in a project like that, including those who approved it for the city, should be charged by police as if they'd just graffiti'd a historic church.

The cvs in bexley is a pretty decent version of a more urban drugstore. I believe there is also one in worthington that is ok.

^Is that second story pure facade or is there something up there?

 

I think its a fake:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=qht4cg7yvs96&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=35176336&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

Well, that would make me like it a lot less.

I wonder if there is any way to limit the proximity of drugstores to one another.  We do it with adult businesses, afterall, so there is a mechanism.  But can it be applied to drugstores?

Here's how to do it right. This CVS occupies the former Woolworth's in downtown Columbus, a building that was incorporated into the new development on the right. It's mixed-use.

 

 

This CVS at Lane & High across from OSU is a handsome enough building, but is woefully inadequate. The city should create a mixed-use overlay district that requires taller, mixed-use buildings along major thoroughfares and at major intersections. Otherwise, we get urban sprawl (as opposed to the more-common suburban sprawl). This one-story, single-use building replaced an Arbys, a Burger King building and a convenience store. Granted, those were ugly buildings and not great uses, but three businesses are replaced by one. That, by definition, is sprawl. At a key campus "gateway" location like this, the building should have been a minimum of four stories, with offices and apartments.

 

This one in North River (Chicago) is nice.  Two stories.(2nd story in use)  Proportioning is correct.  Real Masonry.

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?source=ig&hl=en&q=Chicago,+IL&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=us&ei=0MCVSeOnB9PGtgeF6ZGkCw&ll=41.899011,-87.628251&spn=0.002723,0.006781&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=41.899929,-87.628293&panoid=7fcOnfKHu-T7xjWRT9KuJA&cbp=12,56.89035887186747,,0,-7.8723946490273535

Why so small??

^Is that second story pure facade or is there something up there?

 

I think its a fake:

http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=qht4cg7yvs96&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=35176336&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1

 

High Ceilings + Wide Open Floorplan + Tons O' HVAC = no second story office/residential for you!

This one in Cincinnati isn't bad at all, IMO. It fits nicely within its urban context. I don't know if it's a preexisting building, but the apparently real second and third storeys and the windows make it look like it is. It reminds me of some of the GC Murphy stores of the late 40s-early 50s.

 

^Plus, right across the street from this CVS is a Walgreens that has second and third floor apartments. 

Youngstown will have the "privilege" of getting one of these suburban style CVS pharmacies right next door to Stambaugh Auditorium. :roll:

http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/feb/04/cvs-store-survives-beefs-over-its-design/

 

When the design review committee had the audacity to complain that CVS planned to use split-face block, and place the service drive and dumpsters so they were actually facing Stambaugh, the builder threw a fit and threatened to build somewhere else.  Apparently, it was cleared up though.

Youngstown will have the "privilege" of getting one of these suburban style CVS pharmacies right next door to Stambaugh Auditorium. :roll:

http://www.vindy.com/news/2009/feb/04/cvs-store-survives-beefs-over-its-design/

 

When the design review committee had the audacity to complain that CVS planned to use split-face block, and place the service drive and dumpsters so they were actually facing Stambaugh, the builder threw a fit and threatened to build somewhere else. Apparently, it was cleared up though.

 

The committee should have called their bluff. CVS's market research doubtless told them that there were competitors (Walgreen) ready to build there if they didn't.

This 1990s-era Revco design is the most heinous crap I've seen inflicted on the landscape.  This particular example is on the square in Lodi, Ohio, and it's the only building on the square/triangle that is setback from the street.  Obviously its windowless concrete block exterior meshes perfectly with the remaining historic building stock...

 

 

Neighboring building to the right:

 

And the lovely sign along the brick street:

^ That is a crime.

 

To make you all feel better.  There was a guy that worked on the "low budget" projects.  As an architecture firm, it's considered a huge embarrassment to design strip malls and highway commercial structures, because of the clients and how uninspiring they can be.  But hey, take the money when you need it.

 

Anyway this dude was always grouchy.  His typical design elements were textured cmu block and hollow metal frames.  In case you don't know what hollow metal frames are.  Look at the typical framing you find around doors and windows on most cell-block like structures built after the late 50's.  You've probably seen them a lot in schools or industrial buildings.  The buildings designed were pretty uninspiring and they were absent from the featured work of the firm.  Despite that he was kind of nasty to other employees, I always felt really bad for the guy.

 

Hmmmm post #1111 for me.

Another bad one. This is on W. High St. in New Philadelphia, a half mile or so west of downtown. A couple years ago, this was a grouping of about 10 buildings built along the slope of the land and coming to a point at a five-points intersection. The buildings followed the landscape and the angles of the streets. Rite-Aid leveled all the buildings (Where did the people go? Left the area? Moved to some schlocky apartment complex that sprawls on some edge of town?), graded the slope away, put up retaining walls, laid down a lot of asphalt and put an ugly, boxy, square, flat building on a triangular, once gracefully sloping piece of land.

 

Three or four blocks east, Walgreens is trying again to rezone a residential area to level four or five historic homes to put in a big box and an expanse of asphalt.

 

Some of these are too ugly! 

 

If you stand at one intersection in Norwalk, you can see Rite-Aid, Walgreens, and CVS.....not to mention the now-vacant Giant Eagle grocery store (all with sprawling parking lots, all within a half-mile of each other, and all within a couple of blocks of Main Street / Uptown :(

there is decent CVS in Oxford...

there is decent CVS in Oxford...

 

The scale is right for the surrounding neighbohood context and it is mixed-use with residential above, but it unfortuately sits behind a parking lot. I doubt CVS would be in this 'decent' situation though in Oxford if it wasn't for the Stewart Square development. Walgreens built their typical design just a block away.

 

^ Wow, that really looks nice!  Although the buildings, next to it look like cheap crap.